Three Pakistani Mariners Return Home After Five‑Month Somali Pirate Captivity

KARACHI: The last three Pakistani survivors of the hijacking of the oil tanker MT Honour 25 by Somali pirates will fly home on Wednesday, ending a grueling five‑month captivity that claimed five crew lives and highlighted a resurgence of piracy off Somalia’s coast. 

The vessel, which flies the Palau flag, was seized on 21 April off Puntland’s northeastern coast with 17 crew members on board, ten of whom were Pakistani nationals. Puntland security forces re‑took the ship last week and detained 16 suspected pirates, according to regional authorities.

During the operation to recover the vessel, five crew members were killed—three Pakistanis, one Indian, and one Myanmar national—while four Pakistanis were wounded. The injured sailors and the remains of the three deceased Pakistani crew were repatriated to Karachi on Sunday.

The remaining Pakistani sailors, identified as Syed Hussain Yousuf, Imran Ali and Muhammad Yasin, have been in Addis Ababa since their transfer from Garowe, the capital of Puntland, and are now awaiting their return flight. “We are in constant contact with them,” said Syed Talib, nephew of Yousuf, the ship’s second engineer. “They are not injured and are otherwise fine.”

Yousuf and Ali hail from Karachi, while Yasin is from Swat in northwestern Pakistan. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar confirmed on Monday that the sailors had been flown to Addis Ababa accompanied by a team from Pakistan’s embassy in Djibouti and would depart for Karachi on the earliest available Ethiopian Airlines flight on Wednesday.

The hijacking occurred amid a renewed wave of piracy and armed robbery in the waters around Somalia, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The International Maritime Organization reported 24 attempted or successful incidents in the preceding three months, with 44 seafarers held captive aboard three vessels, including the Honour 25. “These incidents are a stark reminder that the threat posed by piracy and armed robbery to seafarers has not receded,” IMO Secretary‑General Arsenio Dominguez said at the time.

The Honour 25 was carrying roughly 18,500 barrels of oil at the time of the hijacking, according to Puntland authorities. Qurat Ul Ain, legal adviser to the Ansar Burney Trust—a Pakistani human‑rights group that assisted the crew—said the organization’s efforts to secure the sailors’ release and repatriation have concluded. “Our work is done after all the legal requirements. Three bodies have been buried, four injured crew members are already home and the remaining three will arrive tomorrow,” she told Arab News. She added that the group has not yet been approached by the sailors or their families regarding compensation or insurance claims.

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